"I Don't Want to Live Like This" Released: 30 January 2025
"Toothache" Released: 20 March 2025
"It's Only Love" Released: 16 May 2025
"Something's Wrong" Released: 6 June 2025
Don't Tell The Dog is the second studio album by English indie rock musician James Marriott. Recorded in mid-2024, the album contained references to childhood loss, breakups, and unprocessed guilt and featured the singles "I Don't Want to Live Like This", "Toothache", "It's Only Love", and "Something's Wrong". It charted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and was praised by The Line of Best Fit.
The influencer and musician James Marriott,[3] who had been born in Switzerland, raised in Buckinghamshire,[1] and moved to Brighton around 2021,[2] had previously peaked at number 17 on the UK Albums Chart with Are We There Yet? in 2023. He wrote his second album over a year[1] while undergoing therapy[2] and had recorded it by July 2024 over three weeks at Big Jelly Studios in Ramsgate. One track sampled the squeaks of a nearby playground slide.[1] He told the publication that he had "wanted to take it in a direction that was a little bit less indie-rock and more indie-pop" as he felt that parts of Are We There Yet? were slightly self-indulgent.[1]
The album's lead single, "I Don't Want to Live Like This",[1] charted at No. 67 on the UK singles chart[4] and No. 1 on the UK Singles Downloads Chart. He released a grunge track, "Toothache", in March 2025,[5] which he had written in the green room at Chalk in Brighton[1] about a childhood dental problem he ignored due to his apathy towards pain.[6] A music video for the track featured Marriott visiting a cheap dentist.[5] He released a further track, the indie folk track "It's Only Love", in May 2025, which was accompanied by a folk horror-inspired video featuring an axe throwing Marriott bringing scarecrow couples to life. He picked the track as a single to represent the second half of the album.[7] Just before the album was released, "Something's Wrong" entered the UK singles chart update at No. 97.[4] "Plasticine" was also considered for single release; that track discussed his childhood hobby of making claymation models to process his loneliness.[2]
Don't Tell The Dog was released on 13 June 2025.[8] Its tracks contained references to childhood loss, breakups, and unprocessed guilt, and Marriott used the writing process to vocalise feelings he had been unable to get out during therapy.[2] The album's cover featured a clay model of his childhood dog Jasper[1] and its title took its name from an incident involving a childhood move in which the dog had been left behind.[2] Among its tracks were "Limbs", a raw track he purposefully left unfinished to evoke sounding broken, and "Food Poisoning", a track about denial. The Line of Best Fit wrote that the album "splits like a vinyl record: Side A filled with narrative vignettes, Side B drifting into uncertainty".[2]
The album was promoted with a string of in-store appearances and charted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart,[9] beating albums by Sabrina Carpenter and Oasis.[10][3] It also topped the Official Vinyl Albums Chart and the Official Record Store Chart.[9]The Line of Best Fit was struck by how deeply Marriott was willing to excavate and described the album as "jagged, unvarnished, and quietly devastating".[2]The Official Charts Company described the album as "playful yet profound" and "anchored by Marriott’s signature introspective lyricism and theatrical flair", and wrote that its blue dog artwork was "a symbol of the album’s balance between personal chaos and creative clarity".[8]
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